


Haunted

by rosweldrmr



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Consensual Underage Sex, F/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:17:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3166163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosweldrmr/pseuds/rosweldrmr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia haunts Peter after she's killed by the Oni. | She flickers to life like a ghost, arms outstretched, beseeching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haunted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivorygraves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygraves/gifts).



> This was written for [Ivy](http://ivorygraves.tumblr.com/). She [asked](http://for-winterashby.tumblr.com/post/106854832192/whispers-fic-idea-where-lydia-ends-up-dying), and I couldn't help myself. It was such a good idea. Thank you to [Dilly](http://duskendales.tumblr.com/) for the read through and pointers, I couldn't have done this without you.

Lydia doesn’t feel the cold steel blade as it slices through her middle. She doesn’t hear Allison’s wailing cry as she stumbles forward to catch her as she falls. She doesn’t see Stiles, the real Stiles, fall to his knees, head buried in his hands, a scream tearing at his throat.

She is, instead, strangely absent from the moment. As if she is watching it play out behind a thin veil of black sheer fabric that hushes her friends’ cries and mutes the bright colors of her death.

Distantly, she wonders if her parents will fight at her wake. She wonders if Stiles will ever recover, if Scott will ever forgive himself, if Allison will find the peace she deserves.

\--

Peter feels the change in the air the night Lydia is killed by the Nogitsune’s fireflies. The hair raises on the back of his neck, and he can smell the crackle of lightning in the distance.

A storm is coming.

\--

Allison managed to take one of the Oni’s just before Lydia burst from a narrow walkway, dragging Stiles, and threw herself between Allison and the blade she hadn’t seen coming.

She holds her as she dies.

“Please,” Allison begs, “don’t.” As if her words were enough to stem the flow of blood running rivers over her thighs.

\--

Chris hauls Allison up, fingers digging into the cold flesh of his daughter’s elbow. Lydia’s body is still warm and all Chris can do is thank a God he doesn’t believe in that it wasn’t Allison.

\--

They defeat the Nogitsune the same way they always do, together. Even Ethan and Aiden show up, to avenge Lydia. Scott holds Allison after it’s all over and lets her cry. Isaac and Kira give them space because they both understand the private pain the two share in no way diminishes what they are to the other. Stiles quietly slips away, too ashamed to allow himself to mourn.

\--

Jackson comes home for the service. He and Allison stay long after Lydia’s ashes are spread over a huge tree stump. He knows why it had to be here, but it still feels wrong. They should have spread them over a cliff at the coast. Jackson knows how much Lydia loved the ocean.

\--

Derek isn’t surprised when the twins leave town before the funeral. He is surprised, however, when he catches Peter’s scent at the nemeton at the small service they hold for Lydia. But he doesn’t mention it and no one else asks so he lets it go. With the Nogitsune contained and their pack diminished, he is too weary to question the ‘why’s anymore.

\--

Peter wakes in the middle of the woods a few months later. He has no memory of walking there, but his bare feet are caked with mud and had he been human, he might have been hypothermic. But the thing about it that shakes him to the core is he can’t smell his own trail leading from his apartment into the woods. It’s like he fell asleep in his own bed, and was transported there.

He recognizes the electric feel of power that radiates from the nemeton.

\--

Lydia isn’t’ sure how long she lays in darkness, how long the land of the living rotates on, but she assumes it must be some time. When she first opens her eyes and sees the veiled form of Peter Hale marching alone through the woods she thinks he looks older. It must be cold, the way his breath condenses and thin snow falls. Early November, maybe.

She’s been dead for months.

\--

The next time Peter wakes up in the woods, he’s practically laying on the stump of the ancient druid tree. There is still the same feeling of power crawling up his spine.

It’s the first time he sees her.

Just a flash of red hair in the moonlight. Her skin is pale, her fingers are blue.

She runs.

\--

Too tired to walk home, Peter shows up at Derek’s loft at 5:37 AM and quietly lets himself in.

Derek asks something with his eyebrows that Peter doesn’t feel like trying to interpret so he just shrugs and passes out.

\--

Through the veil of darkness and disembodiment, Lydia recognizes Derek’s loft. Were she corporeal, she would have wept.

\--

The second time he sees the banshee, he is alone in his apartment.

She flickers to life like a ghost, arms outstretched, beseeching.

She appears without warning. There is no snap of power or smell of death. There is no wailing cry or flickering lights. She just springs into existence, a mockery of the young girl she used to be. All vibrancy and life are scrubbed from the pale ghostly thing that stands before him.

Peter is so surprised, he almost crab-crawls over the back of his couch.

“No!” he shouts at the empty air that projects her dead, faceless form.

\--

“You owe me!” Lydia thinks. She imagines forming the words, she imagines pulling Peter up to look her in the face and demand that he help her.

No matter how hard she tries to appear to someone else,  _anyone_ else, it's only ever Peter. And the terrible irony of it is not lost on her. 

“It’s only fair,” she thinks, “I did it for you.”

But she knows, there’s nothing about her life that’s fair.

\--

After that, she comes more frequently. He sees her turning a corner, descending stairs, her hair falling in waves down her back as she stands motionless at the doors of the high school. As if waiting.

He follows her, curious at first. He tries to speak with her, but the few times he manages to outpace her, he finds she has no face. Just a skeleton skull that manages to look at once sad and annoyed.

She doesn’t respond, and he finds himself wishing she would.

He misses her voice.

\--

If only he could hear her. She knows he can see her, though what he sees she doesn’t know. But the cowed ‘Oh God’ he whispers the few times she manages to get his attention convinces her not to try it with anyone else, no matter how much she wishes it could have been Allison or Scott. 

\--

“Miss me?” Lydia asks and Peter jerks in alarm. It’s the first time he’s seen her face since the day the Nogitsune took her.

He doesn’t stop to consider the fact that maybe he’s just going insane. He just gathers her up into his arms and tries not to think about the fact that she smells like a graveyard and is cool to the touch.

\--

It’s February before Lydia manages to make Peter hear her. The night of the wolf moon she projects herself past the veil and quirks an eyebrow when she asks if he’s missed her.

She's come to the frustrating conclusion that this just can't work with anyone else. For some reason, she is tied to Peter. They are connected beyond the veil. And it terrifies her that there is something about him that summons her, invokes her. She hates it. She hates that it's Peter. She hates that she has no control. But she hates being dead more, so she swallows whatever misgivings she might have and allows herself the momentary joy of finally exerting some influence over a physical form.

What she doesn’t expect, couldn't have counted on, was him collapsing against her. Clinging to her as if she were something precious, someone dear. And she is just so happy to have arms and hands, she can't help herself but embrace him too.

\--

“What do I look like?” She asks.

“You.” Peter tells her and circles her in his otherwise empty apartment.

“No, I mean, am I older?”

“The dead don’t age,” he says.

“Yes, I’m aware. But when you were haunting me, I saw a younger version of you.”

Finally catching her meaning Peter smirks. “You saw what you needed to see,” he tells her, moving in to crowd her space, as if he could still intimidate her. And he feels a pang of grief when he realizes that the graveyard is the only thing he can smell. “What I needed you to see to get what I wanted.”

“So what do you need to see to trust me?” she asks and Peter hates that she can still read him so well.

“I see you.”

\--

Derek’s worried about Peter. Not in the same way he worries about Scott or the rest of them. He’s more concerned that the lack of contact from his uncle doesn’t bode well. Like a canary before a gas leak, Peter has always served as an early indicator of imminent danger.

\--

“You’re worried... about Peter?” Scott asks Derek, slow and deliberate, like he’s trying to get all the inflections just right.

“Not worried worried. I’m just… worried?” Derek tries again.

“Oh yeah, that clears everything up. Thank you very much,” Stiles chimes in from a corner of the loft. He is removed from Scott and the others. He has been for months. Derek chooses not to say anything about it.

“I’m worried that when Peter disappears that usually means something horrible is about to happen.” Derek explains and he can practically see everyone else in the room doing the math.

“When was the last time you saw him?” Scott asks.

“A few months after…” Derek pauses. The words ‘the funeral’ hang heavy in his mind. “He just showed up in the middle of the night. He’d been to the nemeton.”

And if that wasn’t enough to get the other’s concerned, he wasn’t sure what would be.

“Shit,” Allison mumbled and pulls out her phone, already calling her dad.

\--

“Derek’s back.” Lydia tells Peter. He’s sitting on the floor of his living room, furniture pushed to the sides of the room and piled up out of the way. There are books and papers littering the floor. His laptop is open and Lydia thinks there is something so young about the way his face looks, molded in concentration, bathed in a soft blue glow from his computer.

“Ignore him.” Peter snaps, not bothering to look up.

“It’s the fifth time he’s come to the apartment in a week.” she warns.

“He doesn’t know I’m here though, right?” he finally looks up and Lydia almost wishes she hadn’t come back. Not if it means lying and making blood sacrifice.

“No,” she tells him, sighing. “Something about me being here shields you.”

“Good,” he says turning back to his research. “That’s good.”

\--

“And you’re sure he hasn’t left town?” Chris asks, checking the chamber of his pistol for a round.

“Sure,” Derek says.

“But you said you can’t track him?” The Sheriff asks.

“It’s like he’s in his apartment, all trails lead right to his door. But beyond that?” he shrugs. “As far as I can tell, there’s nothing behind the door.”

“So he’s not there?” The Sheriff asks.

“No. Like nothing exists inside his apartment. No sounds, no smells. Like it isn’t even real?” he tries to explain the unnerving gap that he felt each time he tried to get through.

“Like a spell.” Chris guesses and Derek nods.

\--

“How do you not know?” Lydia asks, hands on her hips and Peter struggles to see past it.

“It’s complicated. I was dead and things are… hard to remember. All I know is I--” Peter breaks the thought off just shy of saying ‘I was drawn to you’. “I could feel your presence.”

“Yeah,” she says growing even more agitated. “I know the feeling.”

“And the closer it got to the worm moon, the stronger I felt.”

“But the wolfsbane, and the blood. I literally carried Derek out of the train depot.” She asks again and Peter can feel the rage pool in his gut.

“I don’t know, okay? I have no fucking clue how this works. It’s not like I have a goddamn manual.” He’s yelling at her now, and something about this feels more natural than the companionable silence they’d been trapped in for days.

“You knew I was a banshee!”

“Yeah, because I wasn’t a moron. So I bit you.” he explains and his breath is ragged from yelling. “I claimed you.” he announces to his ghost-filled apartment. “You are mine. I made you.” he hisses and backs her visage into a wall.

“Then why weren’t you there?” She chokes the accusation, tears he can’t even fucking smell, tumbling down her cheeks. "Why didn't you come for me?"

\--

Lydia watches in horror as Peter tears his apartment apart. He rips pictures from the walls, rips drywall from studs and punches holes through the tastefully minimalist backsplash in his unused kitchen. He screams until his voice goes and even then he roars a hoarse and pitiful rage into the space between them.

She wants to run. She wants to forget about coming back, or saying goodbye. She wants to move on, find a light in the distance. But she can’t. Somehow, she knows she can’t. She’s tethered to this plane, to him.

Because she’s his. Apparently.

Whatever that means.

\--

Kira’s mom is the one who’s finally able to graze the barrier of Peter’s apartment. Derek feels a little bad they didn’t ask her sooner, but she says she was only able to glean two presences beyond the spell. She suspects that it has more to do with the power fluctuations than her skills as a mage.

“I’m self taught,” she offers by way of an apology when they realize they’re no closer to figuring out what’s going on.

\--

“Almost time,” Meredith tells Stiles in passing. He runs into her outside Ms. Morrell’s office after therapy one day. It’s the first time he’s seen her in months.

“Almost time for what?” He asks her, spinning on his heels.

“She’s sad,” Meredith says in that strange, lilting way she does.

“Almost time for what, Meredith?” he tries again, but she just smiles wanly and wanders off.

\--

“It’s been three weeks.” Scott groans. Three weeks since they realized Peter was either trapped or - more likely - hiding behind an impenetrable spell.

“Who’s Meredith?” Jackson asks and Scott has to try and remember who was around for which parts of the backstory.

“She’s a banshee, like Lydia.” Allison tells him softly, and Scott can smell her unshed tears.

“So, what’s coming?” Isaac asks and Stiles shrugs. He still looks thin and pale, even 6 months later and Scott knows where he ran into Meredith but decides to leave that part out.

“Don’t know.” Stiles answers.

“But if a banshee is involved, you can almost be sure that it won’t be good.” Derek says from his place across the room.

And Scott doesn’t think he can survive losing anyone else.

\--

“You can’t!” Lydia protests but Peter is already making his way towards the door to his apartment. It’s been almost a month since he locked himself in, cloistered himself away. But now that he is sure he knows what needs to happen, Lydia is desperate to stop him.

“It’s the only way,” he explains and reaches for the doorknob.

Lydia, unable to stop him, resorts to launching herself at him and kissing him blindly.

She knows it's reckless but she also knows it will work. She’s always known Peter was infatuated with her. Even before he bit her, she’d had at least three close encounters with his twisted alpha form. She always seemed to be on the periphery of his life, his choices.

And when he’d haunted her last year, it was only when she’d kissed him that he’d revealed his true self.

\--

Peter struggles to get past the pull that she seems to have over him. But as he reaches for the door, ready to end this, she throws herself at him. Her lips are soft and billowy against his own. He wants to pull away, to tear her apart - this doll that looks and talks like Lydia but doesn’t smell like her. But he can’t.

He can’t stop himself from cradling her against the vertical plane of the door and surrendering to her. He can’t stop himself from wanting her, from wanting this.

\--

Lydia relaxes into his touch. She knows this dance, at least. They’ve done this before.

And he is still familiar. The angles of his chest, the slope of his neck, the cage of his arms. In the month since she first materialized in his apartment, this is what they’d been building to. This is always where they were headed. She just hadn’t been able to see it before. Clouded by doubt and fear, she wished for freedom from her prison of death. But, really, this was always the culmination of their journey.

\--

Peter, with great effort, manages to extricate himself from Lydia’s hold. They still stand inches apart in front of his apartment door, breathing heavily. But he knows better than to believe it.

Everything about Lydia is a lie. A carefully crafted facsimile that is as empty as he feels

“Scream,” he croons into the artificially heated space between them and closes his eyes as her barriers fall.

\--

“Lydia?” Scott wakes to the sound of a hauntingly familiar scream.

No more than five seconds later his phone rings. It’s Derek.

“Did you hear it?” Derek asks and Scott can feel grief and dread settle like lead against his bones.

“Lydia.” He answers and hangs up.

\--

Scott is the first to show up at the unmarked grave, deep in Hale territory.

“What’s going on?” He asks Peter, who stands with his back to him.

“Sorry about this.” Peter says, not looking sorry at all, and traps Scott and himself in a ring of Mountain Ash.

\--

“Peter!” Derek yells just as he slams into the barrier. But it isn’t like it was before, when they couldn’t sense anything. Now, Derek can smell Peter, the strangled scent of distress masked by anger.

Derek watches as Peter advances on Scott, without so much as acknowledging him.

\--

“It takes an alpha.” Peter explains, his pupils blow wide and his voice strangely distant.

Scott turns to Derek, trapped on the other side of the Mountain Ash, trying desperately to claw his way through.

“I don’t understand, what needs an alpha?” Scott asks Peter trying to inch away from him in the confined ring.

“Resurrection.”

\--

“Whose grave is this?” Derek asks but it does little to slow the advance of Peter.

“You know.” Peter calls and Scott’s face crumbles.

“Lydia?” he asks and Derek can read the pain on his face like words on a page. “But she was cremated.” Scott insists, past struggling now.

“You think I’d let you burn her?” Peter growls and something cracks inside Derek. It feels like relief, like hope.

“You stole her body.” Derek surmises and Peter smiles.

“And now, all I need is the blood of an Alpha.”

\--

“No!” Lydia screamed, trapped once more behind the veil. “Not like this!” And she means it. If the price of her return is spilling Scott's blood, she doesn’t want it.

\--

“Fine,” Scott says, holding his arms out for Peter. “If that’s what you need to bring her back.” Scott drops to his knees over Lydia’s shallow grave and waits.

\--

Peter, outside of the spell-induced-haze, might be a little jealous of Scott in that moment. The way he sinks to his knees and offers up his very life as a trade for hers.

Peter can see flickers of her, she screams for him to stop. But even if he were inclined, which he isn’t, it would be too late. What she started by taking possession of him cannot be undone. The spell must come to fruition, he is bound by it. Just as she was.

\--

“Derek survived,” Lydia thinks, rationalizes, just before Peter slices into the flesh of Scott’s arms.

\--

Scott bites back a scream as Peter’s claw rip his wrists open. “For Lydia,” he tells himself and Derek as his blood spills, soaking the wet, packed earth beneath him.

\--

Lydia wakes in darkness. The smell of damp soil and the metallic tang of blood convince her that this is real.

\--

Almost as soon as Peter hears another heartbeat join the three of them, he returns to himself. Full capacity over his limbs and mind. Immediately, he drops to his knees and breaks the barrier, pushing Scott’s unconscious body towards Derek.

But he doesn’t spare either of them another glance. He is already elbow deep in the bloody dirt. He tears at it, ripping large clumps of soil and grass and tossing them aside. He is only dimly aware of what he must look like: a dog digging for bones.

Finally after a chilled minute of digging, his claws graze something soft and yielding. There is a whimper that nearly breaks him.

“Lydia!” He calls into her grave, his fingers twining with hers as she reaches for him.

\--

“Lydia!” Someone is calling to her and Lydia reaches towards the pain. Pain means a body. Nerve endings and synaptic pathways. Life.

She’s alive.

\--

She’s alive.

She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.

Peter thinks it over and over. Like a litany, she is a benediction.

She’s alive.

\--

Derek does his best to stem the bleed from Scott’s arms.

“Stupid,” he chastises him, even though Scott can’t hear him. He’s lost too much blood and Derek knows he should take him to the hospital. And image of Scott’s mom in her nursing scrubs bearing down on him is almost enough to drive him into action.

But there is something aching about the way Peter digs in the dirt for Lydia. The way he screams her name and loses himself to it, to her. Derek feels oddly like a voyeur. Like Peter’s pain and desperation are something to be admired.

But when he drags her from the ground, he is more gentle than Derek can ever remember seeing his uncle. He does turn away then, opting to heft Scott onto his shoulder and make for town. The way Peter’s eyes go wide and round is more than Derek can take.

\--

Peter carefully hauls Lydia from her grave, dirt and blood and tears are mingled in the crisp night air. But under that, unlike before, he can smell her. The soft smell of skin and hair, of Lydia’s naturally sweet scent. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until now.

She is naked and trembling and Peter gathers her up in his arms, seated on his lap, and drapes himself around her like a shield.

“Peter?” she asks, and her voice is so small he has to pull back to make sure it was really her who’d spoken.

“Don’t do that again. I’m pretty sure this only works once,” he says just before he hugs her close.

\--

Isaac leads Allison, Chris, Stiles, and the Sheriff to Peter’s scent. He’d heard Lydia’s banshee call a hour ago, but hadn’t allowed himself to believe it before Derek called him from the hospital.

They find Peter exactly where Derek said he’d left them, knee-deep in Lydia’s grave.

\--

“Lydia?” Allison asks, her voice is barely more than a whisper. There is someone tangled in Peter’s arms, their long, unruly hair is tangled and caked with bloody dirt. Even before she turns her face from the crook of Peter’s neck to face them, Allison knows it's her.

\--

“Ally?” Lydia asks, the sound of her own name being called pulls her from the cave of Peter’s embrace. She twists her fingers in his V-neck shirt for a second longer, and then she’s being pulled up and away. There are too many people, too many voices, and she’s lost in a sea of faces she knows she loves. She should feel safe and protected, but without Peter, she just feels cold.

A brown polyester jacket is slung around her shoulders and Lydia lets herself be carried away.

\--

Isaac lingers for a second before following the crowd back towards the main road where they left their cars. Unlike the others, he can smell the distress coming off Peter in angry torrents.

“Peter?” he asks, inching towards him, hand outstretched in offering.

“Make sure she’s safe.” Peter growls before he disappears in the opposite direction.

Isaac can hear his sputtering heartbeat long after he’s gone.


	2. Inextricable

“What was it like?” Kira asks Lydia a month later. She’s been declared legally not dead, but getting back to things ‘as usual’ are proving to be more difficult.

Stiles still won't look her in the eye. And no matter what Lydia says, his can't seem to crawl his way out of the prison of guilt he’s built for himself.

“Dark,” Lydia answers honestly and Kira nods. She’s seen the dark too. They all have.

\--

“I don't blame you,” Lydia says for the umpteenth time. Stiles nods. He knows this script. They've done it a hundred times already.

“I know,” he says right on queue.

“Everything turned out okay,” Lydia says, taking his hand and Stiles feels nothing but a stab of guilt. She must see it on his face, because she pulls away. Right on queue.

He saw her die. She might not be dead anymore. But nothing, not even Peter raising her from the dead can ever erase watching her be run through and bleed out in Allison's arms.

“Give her a break,” Jackson says from somewhere behind him. They both watch Lydia walk away.

“Why are you even still here?” Stiles snaps and Jackson just give him his best asshole smile.

“Beacon Hills is home.” Jackson says like it explains anything.

\--

“I need help with something,” Lydia announces as she sits next to Stiles in the quad.

“Uh?” His question hangs heavy between them, but Lydia ignores him.

“With Peter MIA, I asked Derek to give me his laptop,” she tells him as she shows him the pilfered thing. “Help me crack it.”

“Crack it?” He’s gone from what’s become the norm - quiet and reserved around her - to more like the old Stiles. Curious. Inquisitive.

“When I was haunting him, he worked a lot on here. There’s research and information that could be useful to Scott or me, or any of us really.” She lays out her plan and tries to bite back a smile when his hands reach for it.

But then he pauses, and all that light and spark fades from his face. “You should ask Danny. He’s better at this.”

“I’m asking you. Besides, Danny doesn’t know about me, or Peter. How would I explain it?”

Stiles shrugs and hands the laptop back, moving to stand. Desperation surges in Lydia and something in her snaps. “Stiles Stalinski!” She shouts his name loud enough for people to look and he stands there, balanced on the edge of amusement and shame.

“You are not responsible for what happened to me. Do you understand me? If it hadn’t have been you, it would have been someone else. You didn’t ask for it. And you did your best to fight it. I don’t blame you. No one blames you. And if you don’t get your head out of your ass and start acting like a friend you’re not going to have any left!” Lydia puts the laptop under her arm and leans into Stiles’ space - a move she is keenly aware that she learned from Peter.

“When it took me, I was terrified. But I knew it wasn’t you. I knew you’d come for me. All I want is the old Stiles back. The one who didn’t flinch when I walked in a room, or hide in a corner, refusing to make eye contact. I died to save Allison, and she managed to forgive me. It was my choice and every time you insist it was your fault, you make that sacrifice mean less.” Lydia was through codling him, being nice, walking on eggshells. Enough was enough. And maybe it wasn’t fair but it was the only thing she could think of to snap him out of this. “Or maybe you wish I would have just stayed dead, that way you could punish yourself and wallow in peace.”

“Lydia-”

“Call me when you’re ready to apologize.” She calls over her shoulder as she sashays away.

\--

“You're back?” Derek asks Peter, standing in the doorway to his loft.

“I just needed to pick up a few things.” Peter answers and moves around him.

“Your stuff's in storage." Derek tells him. “I had to pay for damages.”

Peter grumbles a thanks and heads right for the box of belongings Derek felt was too valuable or personal to keep in storage.

“Lydia's doing much better,” Derek says, crossing his arms over his chest and feeling smug.

“Good for her." Peter replies. "Where's my laptop?”

“Gave it to Lydia.” Derek says and he may or may not be enjoying watching Peter squirm.

“Why?”

“She asked.” Derek answers truthfully.

\--

Lydia sits at her desk at home. Cell phone in her hand, she struggles to listen to the silence, trying to make out the voices of the dead who scream beyond the veil.

She was one of them, not that long ago.

Now she fingers the scabs on her wrists and adjusts her position to release some of the latent pain in her legs. She is sore and tries her best not to think about why that is. Why her wrist aches and the thought of an enclosed space makes her heart shudder.

Her phone rings and for one brief second, this thinks it might be Peter. But then she sees Stiles picture and heaves a sigh of frustration.

“Is this an apology?”

“Yes,” Stiles says and Lydia is glad. She doesn't have the energy to deal with coming back to life and having another fruitless conversation with Stiles.

“Good. Apology accepted.” She knows it can't be that easy. But it's a start, at least.

\--

“I knew you’d show up sooner or later,” Lydia says. Her back is turned to Peter as he approaches the nemeton.

“You have something of mine,” he says and Lydia strains to make out the meaning behinds his words.

“I thought I was yours.”

\--

She’s waiting for him at the nemeton. He can feel the heat radiating off her skin, smell the faint scent of sadness buried under school and the forest. He knows she can feel him too, the way her heartbeat quickens to a rabbit pace. It makes his claws grow, the sense of a chase shrouds them.

\--

“You might have noticed, but I wasn’t exactly myself, what with someone possessing me and all.” He makes it a joke. But it’s a sour thing, denial. Something he is unaccustomed to.

“I think you were finally being honest.” she counters, turning to face him. He catches the scent of tears as the wind gusts, tossing her hair across her face. Without meaning to, without realizing, he’s stepped forward and caught her face in his hands. He smooths her hair out of her face and bends to inspect her swollen eyes.

“What do you want from me?” he asks her, barely more than a whisper.

But the way her eyes slip shut and she nearly sighs at the sound of his voice, he already knows what she wants. And it’s something he’s not willing to give.

\--

Lydia can almost pinpoint the exact second he decides to push her away. She sees something pass over his face, something that makes his eyes harden and his hands still. She is losing him again.

“Don’t,” she says and all but crawls into his arms. “Don’t leave me alone again.” Lydia knows she’s shaking, her heart beating wild and syncopated.

\--

Peter struggles past the urgency in his hands to touch and the warring in his chest to run. He should leave her here, in the mud. Let her walk home alone, cold and shattered. He should stop this, tear himself away. This unexpected side effect of using her to bring himself back. He’d never stopped to consider the fact that tying her to him would also mean tying himself to her. He never considered the consequences of being bound to her.

The consequence, of course, was that he never felt like himself when she was around him. But he couldn’t stand to be without her.

In the month after her resurrection, he’d gone deep into hiding, trying to purge her from his system. And with enough time and space he convinced himself that he’d could push her aside and come home.

He knows now he was wrong. There is nothing he can do when she’s this close. Caught in her wake, she will drown him. Burn the very heart out of him until there’s nothing left but a shell of who he once was.

She will tame him. She will make him surrender.

She will make him into Derek, or worse, Scott.

And even so, even knowing that, knowing what staying would mean, he is tempted. How can he not be? She is as much a part of him as he is of her. They are joined, inextricable.

\--

“Take what you need,” Lydia says and offers herself to him. She knows he will never be hers, not the way Jackson was. But she has also come to inescapable conclusion that she cannot be without him. Peter has managed to worm his way into her life, her heart. She is tied to him. Unable to escape the pull of him. And if she has to choose between asking for more than he’s willing to give, and giving more than he’s willing to take, she knows what her choice will be.

\--

“And what if I want more than you can give me?” Peter asks her darkly. There is supposed to be something of a threat in his words. But all he feels is the wash of desire that sweeps through her. The scent of arousal caught in his nose. He struggles to breathe.

“I’m yours,” she tells him, mirroring his exact sentiment from a month ago while he’d confessed that he’d made her.

Peter is powerless against it, against her.

He melts into her, chest pressed against her breasts, he lays her bare across the nemeton. He expects it to be fast. A quick, perfunctory thing that he can forget in the morning. But there is nothing about them that goes as expected.

\--

He is gentle with her. And that is, perhaps, the strangest part of all of it. The way he takes his time removing her clothes and softly lays her down on the flat wide brim of an ancient powerful tree. The way his hands are slow and deliberate when they graze her skin, head to toe.

They kiss intermittently as they shed their clothes like an extra skin. And each time Peter dips his head she thinks she can see something like wonder in his expression.

She arches into him, curves her spine so she twists towards his touch, his lips, his skin. She is shaking, but not cold. She is desperate but not afraid.

Lydia wants him. All of him. All of him that he’s willing to give, she will take. She feels like they have come full circle, like maybe it was always supposed to end like this. Wrapped around each other, entwined and joined. She pushes against him, sliding skin and greedy lips paw at her. She gives and gives and gives.

\--

Peter means for it to be carnal. He means for it to be full of the anger he feels at being held captive. He means for it to be an attack. A predator stalking his prey. But when he slides inside her, when he feels the shuddering breath she exhales, like a sigh, he knows that isn’t what this is.

There are splinters in his knees as he rears back, pulling her limp frame up to cradle against the wide expanse of his bare chest. He hoists her up and meters their movements. The unhurried rise and fall of her hips, anchored to his. He holds the back of her neck and kisses her breathless.

\--

Lydia rides his hips, her knees drag against the rough exposed grain of the nemeton. She doesn’t have to worry about being too boneless to keep up because he molds his hands around her neck and against the small of her back, lifting her as he thrusts into her evenly.

His breath is hot against the skin of her breasts. She gasps when one of his hands finds its way between their bodies, rubbing the throbbing ache of her clit.

\--

Her skin flushes pink and warm when she orgasms. And the smell of it, of them, is almost more than he can take.

Peter grunts, suddenly unsatisfied with their current position and scoots back far enough to lay down, under her. There is a spark of something as he does so, a flash of joy that makes her smile before she leans down, one hand against the stump as her hips rock and bounce.

He is close. Close to giving in. Close to giving up. Close to surrendering to her. To admitting that he needs her, that he’ll never be able to rid himself of her scent after this.

\--

Lydia can feel another surge of arousal urging her faster. The way he slides in and out of her, the angle of his cock as she leans into him, rubbing over the already sensitive flesh of her inner wall. The friction alone almost enough to make her cry out.

She wants this. She want to see him come undone. All his carefully hidden agendas and double meanings stripped away until there is nothing left but the raw truth of him. She wants to see all of him. His scars, his claws, his inhumanly blue eyes.

“Show me,” she begs him, leaning back to raise up on her knees before falling back onto him. The slap of flesh is obscene.

\--

Peter doesn’t need to ask what she wants to see. He knows, somehow, she wants to see the animal he is. She wants all of him. Claws and fangs and blue eyes.

He lets go.

\--

There is a sharp prick of pain in her thigh as his claws form. His teeth gleam white against his lips and his eyes glow.

Lydia cries out, body wracked with a wave of intense pleasure that whites out her vision for a second before she drives her hips down hard and twists her pelvis, drawing out the pained moan Peter lets loose as he comes. She refuses to close her eyes. She wants to see him, see his face when he can’t hold back anymore.

And strangely, he reverts back to his human form. No claws, no fangs, no murderous eyes. Lydia thinks it’s fitting that he be human when he is at his most honest, most vulnerable. She feels like it’s the answer to a riddle she wasn’t aware she’d been trying to solve.

Is he a monster disguised like a man, or a man trapped inside a monster?

She thinks she has an answer now.

\--

“This doesn't mean anything.” Peter tells her and nearly chokes on the lie. She quakes above him, barely able to keep herself from draping over him.

“Fine,” she concedes and the victory is a bitter one. It still feels like losing.

“This doesn't change anything,” he tries again and Lydia looks away. His skin still tingles where her thighs rest on his.

“Tell me when it does.” Lydia responds before she pulls herself up. Naked, on unsteady legs, his come is dripping down her inner thighs. She dresses in silence. The looming threat of ‘when it does’ hangs heavy between them.

He doesn't stop her from leaving. Instead, he waits till her human ears are out of range before he roars feral and desperate into the clear spring night.

He leaves the nemeton, reeking of sex, to run the woods.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second chapter isn't really necessary, but there were some issues I wanted to wrap up from the fallout of Lydia's death. And I wanted some pydia sex. DON'T JUDGE ME.


End file.
